Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The God of High School
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CrypticPurpose
 Posts: 321 |
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Umm... 140 minutes is less than 2 1/2 hours. |
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bennyl
Posts: 123 |
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This suffers from the same issue as Tower of God. I don't know if this is the fault of the production staff or the source material. They either need to go full Dragon Ball Z, forget the overarching story and just dive into the tournament itself and explore that in stretched time detail. Leave out the side characters, the side quests, and just explore the fights. Or, keep the fights more simple, but explore the world through the lens of the fight. You only have 300 minutes to work with, give or take. You wasted 15 on a side character who promptly got his ass beat. You added nothing to the lore, other than he can make a big hammer appear out of thin air. No discussion of how or why he can do it, no shock from the audience that he can. Then we have more people I don't care about having a death match for reasons I don't know. Again, no explanation about why playing cards shoot spikes, and oh by they way that guy didn't just kill big nose glasses guy, but his baby too. I mean that would be awful, if I actually cared about big nose glasses guy.
Many anime almost end up being a frame for frame retelling of the manga. Maybe manhua just doesn't lend itself to this style. Maybe it is more like American comic adaptations where you just use the story arc but ignore the pace. At any rate, this is two duds in a row. They need a hit on the next one, or they need to scrap this program and start over. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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So while I disagree with how strongly James has come down on this anime, I do think his complaints really shows the issue with these recent Webtoon adaptations. As a whole, few Webtoons are suited for a 13 episode anime, often featuring long arcs either immediately upon starting (such as ToG, Kubera, Unordinary and Magician) or within the first 30 or so chapters (Such as GoH and Noblesse). Adaptations of the source material therefore necessitate some wrangling to get things working.
But instead, the two adaptations so far have picked key moments leading to the end of long arcs and then removed away any kind of breathing room. It's all the things the readers want to see animated, but it's not working in this format. They're not producing an original story that has the impressive fight scenes, nor are they really trying to make the Webtoon plot work at all in these constraints. It's all just there, with no real care. ToG just didn't explain anything and made Baam feel increasingly bland, but with GoH, a lot of the tongue-in-cheek moments in the webtoon or goofier behavior of characters are taken out, which are often needed to forgive the plot convenience and simple characterization. A stronger adaptation would have either played this up, possibly going to borderline parody levels, or gone the opposite way and written new scenes to make things more serious and less nonsensical. Instead GoH presents a cliff notes version of the Webtoon that fails to capture any of the tone or feeling of its source material beyond the fight scenes. Characters have been simplified heavily, such as Mujin Park; in the Webtoon he regularly shows himself up as egomaniac that often appears in the most extra way possible purely for the adoration he thinks it will give him, down to changing his name from Mubong - in the anime just a vague chairman. Mujin's ego even serves a purpose, as he will straight up brag to other characters, and even the audience, about his achievements, helping explain concepts like the Six before the preliminaries are even half way through. This extends to the judges/commissioners, who have more time in the Webtoon and more clearly defined personalities and rivalries, with Q and R often getting into petty arguments with one another. While it's basic, the fact that the reader gets to know the people running the tournament at all helps with the confusion and vagueness that negatively effects the anime. As someone above has mentioned, the fights also get more discussion both during and afterwards, to give context to what just happened (attack x is a shockwave, attack y is caused by friction, attack z is wind flow and so on) as well as a discussion of any tactics (Daewi beats Mira because she tried to block his punch with a spare sword, which broke and left her open to an attack. Her discussion with the announcer, and her actions in the fight from this episode, are her dealing with this weak point in her tactics and moving with the attack so to counter. Furthermore, in his fight against Mori, Daewi largely focuses on hitting Mori's leg to weaken his kicks and lower his mobility). Even something as basic as the fact that Mori Jin suffers his first ever defeat at the hand of R, a judge basically just there in the anime, is lessened. Which is especially odd as this defines Mori's entire motivation to first join the tournament, for a rematch with the one guy who beat him. All this isn't good storytelling by any means, I want to stress that, but it adds more to the bare bones plot to make it have some meat. The pacing in the Webtoon, for me personally, was enough for me to really enjoy the entire package. It just reads as a good tournament arc that always introduces new concepts and characters any time things start looking stale. The more that is stripped away in the anime, the more obvious it is that the plot is an excuse for cool fight scenes and has no value beyond that, which makes the package weaker. Ultimately, I feel like both this, and to a lesser extent ToG, aren't being adapted with any care. It's purely an advertisement to read the Webtoon, which I know is true of most anime, but it is really blatant here. They have reduced the anime to moments they think will entice viewers to check out the source material, but nothing else. James' comment about watching the fights on Youtube is the crux of how this adaptation has been tackled. Cool clips between scenes that are really just serviceable. These Webtoon adaptations had a chance to enhance the source material, but instead they are just a greatest hits album of the pre-existing fan's favorite scenes. It's odd, because of all the Webtoons, this one always seemed like the best suited to being adapted - it's basic plot and the first arc/"season" being so short meant that, with some changes to the pacing and filler to expand the characters, a simple, action packed 12 episode cour could have been made. Then all the supernatural stuff and the regional portion of the tournament could have been built up in a follow up season, if the series was successful. Instead they went for a cluttered mess trying to do too much at once. I'm especially bummed out as I really wanted to see the fight where a guy got punched so hard he woke up in Shanghai get adapted, but that would require more seasons, and I doubt this anime is getting a second chance. I can't wait for Crunchyroll to next adapt the first 3 "seasons" of Noblesse into 13 episodes in Fall. |
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MF65
Posts: 89 |
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I won't bother to read the manwha, but I did read some spoilers further ahead and compared to how completely inane the story gets, even this clearly rushed adaptation becomes a lot more appealing. If I turn my brain off for 23 minutes and ignore any attempt to introduce any semblance of a plot, it's quite enjoyable. I might even like Mori, but I've always had a soft spot for dumbasses lol
The most baffling thing to me, though, is that this might be the best looking MAPPA show to date. With the majority of their other shows, no matter how polished they might seem, there's always plenty of quality after the first couple of episodes. But GOH looks great overall, the fights animation/choreography is fantastic. I haven't noticed any quality whatsoever. I know it was finished long before it aired so they had plenty of time to work on it and make it look this good but, like, really MAPPA? You had all this talent lying around and this is the show you're going to flex your animation skills on?! |
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Dicku-kun
 Posts: 166 |
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James, save yourself the headache and review the manhwa instead. The anime adaptation clearly doesn't care for the story, and even the fights since they left out almost all of the expositions like daewi's strategy and why he does what he does during the fight with Jin. It's just purely fight spectacle and that's it.
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R.Obliv
Posts: 31 |
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I mean, to be fair, his job is to review the anime. He has noticed that this anime is all spectacle and empty beyond that, and his reviews going forward will likely reflect that. If he doesn't enjoy the anime, that doesn't have any bearing on the quality of the manhwa, and if he needs to read the manhwa to enjoy the anime, then that's a major knock against the anime and would be reflected in his reviews. An anime reviewer shouldn't feel the need to do anything outside watching the main release and discussing the quality of that. A lot of GoH Webtoon fans, myself included, are posting about how the manhwa is different, but I feel is more to explain to those curious as to what the fanbase sees in it, and I don't think that should have any bearing on James' opinion. I'd definitely be interested in an editorial looking at both the anime and manhwa (maybe of all three of the Manhwa adaptations including the upcoming Noblesse) to discuss why they feel so different (I'm just assuming Noblesse is going to have pacing issues at this point), or whether the difference is just bias from the pre-existing fanbases trying to excuse the anime having a more mixed reaction. However, this would open ANN to being barraged with requests to discuss how other anime have differed from the source manga, so would probably be a no go. Nevertheless, the manhwa, fanbase and anything else external to the episode just watched is beyond the scope of an episode review. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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If the reviewer is right and the manhwa fans agree, this series is probably a waste of my time. Well choreographed and well animated fight scenes are all well and good, but I can watch them on YouTube, alongside NPC man, and Red Dead Logic.
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ETX
Posts: 344 Location: England |
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Not sure what it is, but the reviewers for this season of anime in general are keen on highlighting the dislike on shows in as many ways as possible.
ANN needs to hire some people with an open-mind. |
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Gasero
 Posts: 939 Location: USA |
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Perhaps those reviewers do have open minds and they still aren't enjoying this season's shows. Anime reviewers do not need to be sycophants that only praise the industry. People who enjoy anime can also chastise anime when they don't enjoy it. It would be especially suspect if ANN reviewers only mentioned positive things about the media they review, and sometimes promote in advertisements. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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The reviewer did highlight the good things about the show. But if the production crew treated the anime as strictly a commercial for the manhwa, and not as it's own entity, then the anime as a whole is going to suffer for it. At least you had good animation and good fight scenes, while Arifureta didn't even have that to its name. |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1545 |
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The Stand battles are the worst and just don't make any ounce of sense. Heck, the guy that got outright impaled didn't even have his clothes torn. I don't care that the animation is at points amazing if nothing of what happens there sticks or is of any relevance.
And appropriately enough, when the only likeable characters in the show pulled out their own Stands (how in hell did they even get those in the first place? Only because it's mandatory in order to have "more threatening rivals"?) of course they became pathetic opponents. The Jaws edgeboy can go choke himself with a VHS tape, honestly. And for some reason the design of that lollipop-sucking, dead-eyed, twintailed, cat-belled, cussing, nun cultist irks me since the first time she appeared at the beginning of episode 3 with her BDSM gag. Probably because she's a lollipop-sucking, dead-eyed, twintailed, cat-belled, cussing, nun cultist. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11340 |
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Noblesse has already had two very good adaptations done (one Japanese, one Korean), which one would think might provide a good template for how they could do a third one. But given how ToG and GoHS have been handled, I am not sanguine, to say the least. I hope they don't mess it up too badly, because it's got a pretty nice story at its core and the characters are fun. I really have to finish that before the fall. I fell behind and lost track of where I was once it started devolving into endless fight scenes rendered entirely in sound effects and speed lines and explosions, but I still want to know how it all turned out. |
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N_roxy
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Fight more fight, blood, action, yeah and fight! They are doing what the general public likes, nobody cares about anything else.
If they could cut the boring parts as much as possible they will do it, even if it ruins the show. |
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TexZero
Posts: 583 |
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That's not what's going on though. The anime adaptation has the express blessing of the manhwa artist to be going at this pace because in their minds they enjoy the compressed nature. They felt they as an artist were restricted to the paper medium and to use the staples to expand sequences that otherwise didn't need it. It is acting as it's own entity not a commercial for the manwha in this way. The problem is that people are so used to these kinds of shounen battle action shows falling into the spend 4 episodes on fluffing the background and characters each no matter how irrelevant those characters will be. This show has decided to say bollox to that and just give you the meat of the meat and potatoes. For some people this works for others it doesn't. |
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